At New Orleans Jazz Fest, Louis Prima Jr. keeps the legacy of his legendary entertainer father alive

David Grunfeld / The Times-PicayuneAt a stage of life when some performers are hanging up their instruments in favor of more secure employment, Louis Prima Jr. is gambling on a full-time career, bringing his dad's music to new generations.

As he discussed his second-generation show business career, Louis Prima Jr., son of the late Crescent City showman, rolled up his sleeve to reveal a portrait of his father tattooed on his left forearm.

There he was, Louis Prima Sr., the man once known as the wildest performer in pop music, in the flesh, wearing a white spotlight-catching blazer, his back arched, his trumpet pointed to heaven.

David Grunfeld / The Times-PicayuneThe tattoo is really a symbolic double portrait. When others see it, it's the original Louis Prima, but, 'from my angle, the way I'm looking at it, it's me,' said Louis Prima Jr.,

Or is it Louis Prima Jr., who looks quite a bit like his dad, especially when he assumes one of Louis Prima Sr.'s signature poses?

The tattoo is really a symbolic double portrait. When others see it, it's the original Louis Prima, but, "from my angle, the way I'm looking at it, it's me," said Prima, who closes out the Peoples Health-Economy Hall Tent at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell today, starting at 5:55 p.m.

Prima's tattoo, acquired just last year, is part of a recently renewed commitment to his father's music and memory. This past week, Prima, 44, quit his lucrative shirt-and-tie day job as a food and beverage manager at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. At a stage of life when some performers are hanging up their instruments in favor of more secure employment, Prima, a divorced father of two, is gambling on a full-time career bringing his dad's music to new generations.

"I may be good at management," he said, "but that's not what I was supposed to be doing."

A new career

Louis Prima Sr. was born in New Orleans in 1910 and died here in 1978. At age 44, the explosive performer -- renowned for his fiery horn playing, tongue-in-cheek song stylings, comic stage antics and celebration of his Italian-American heritage -- had achieved great fame as a combo and big band leader in New York and Los Angeles. But in the early 1950s, with the swing era in decline, he had trimmed down his act in hopes of finding work in the more modest confines of Las Vegas lounges.

"They turned the lounge into a bigger place," he said, adding that Prima and Smith's performances became the soundtrack for gatherings of Las Vegas' storied Rat Pack -- including Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra. Prima's act reached a national audience through The Ed Sullivan Show on television, Spitzer said, and Capitol Records releases of broadly popular songs such as "That Old Black Magic," "Jump, Jive an' Wail" and "Just a Gigolo."

"That was the high period of the Vegas lounge scene," Spitzer said.

Louis Prima Jr. was born in Las Vegas on Father's Day 1965. His mother was Prima's fifth wife, singer Gia Maione Prima, who also had a daughter named Lena with Prima. Lena Prima, a jazz singer in her parents' mold, performed some of her father's songs at the Economy Hall Tent on Jazz Fest's first Friday. Lena and Louis Jr. performed together at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts last week during an unveiling of a souvenir envelope issued by the U.S. Postal Service in their father's memory. This year's Jazz Fest poster, by singer/painter Tony Bennett, features a portrait of Prima Sr., who would have been 100 this year.

Prima was the last of Prima's six children and his only son. Louis Prima Sr. was 55 when he was born.

Father and son: pals

Prima remembers his father as a dedicated family man who insisted on dinner around the table at 5 p.m.-- when he was wasn't on the road -- and Sunday mornings at church -- whether the kids liked it or not. Dad taught him to golf, introduced him to celebrities from time to time -- heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman sticks in his mind -- and sometimes made beignets. Prima Jr. was there for the recording of his father's last album. Louis Prima Jr.'s nickname is Brother.

Gia Prima remembers frequently finding father and son piled together in a big easy chair. They called each other "pal," she said.

The family moved to New Orleans when Prima was in third grade. They lived in the Park Esplanade apartments (now The Esplanade at City Park), near the Fair Grounds race course, where Louis Prima Sr. owned horses. Prima attended Holy Rosary Academy and, later, River Forest Academy, when the family moved to a house at Pretty Acres, Louis Prima Sr.'s Covington golf course, which is now a shopping plaza.

Prima said there might have been instances of tabloid behavior during his father's long life in show biz, but he resents writers who have depicted his dad as a hard drinker and wanton womanizer. He said it's not the man he knew.

"He very much enjoyed his family," Prima said. "He came from an immigrant Italian family."

A star, a street, a tree

Prima also is forever irritated that despite the fame his father achieved in life, and the staying power of his songs, he never seems to be placed in the pantheon of music greats.

"Why doesn't he have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? A street named after him in Las Vegas? A tree in New Orleans?" Prima asks. (Covington does have a Louis Prima Drive, which runs into northbound U.S. 190 just north of Interstate 12.)

Bruce Raeburn, curator of the William Ransom Hogan Archive of New Orleans Jazz at Tulane University, agrees that Louis Prima Sr. should be better remembered. He believes the New Orleans musician, whose career in the national spotlight spanned decades, is painted with the same brush as Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton, who sometimes are dismissed for their crowd-pleasing personalities.

David Grunfeld / The Times-PicayuneLouis Prima Jr. took up the trumpet at age 12, the year his father died.

"Certain jazz critics demand a distinction between artist and entertainer," Raeburn said. "If someone has a high profile as an entertainer, that diminishes them as an artist in some minds."

Louis Prima Jr. learned to play drums at age 5, piano soon after and guitar in seventh grade, when it was cool to play guitar. It might be telling that he took up the trumpet at age 12, the year his father died.

"I do believe it was a way to continue to communicate with his father," Gia Prima said.

Suffering from a brain tumor, Louis Prima Sr. underwent high-risk surgery and fell into a coma for three years before dying. His long illness and death were emotionally and financially crushing. As Prima explained, his father never had been terribly adept at financial management, and medical bills wiped out what wealth he had. In the end, Prima said, "my father passed away very, very deeply in debt."

Bitten by the stage bug

As a young adult, Prima, who had returned to Las Vegas after his father's death, intended to pursue a career in business. He enrolled in college, but his part-time airport job, managing Las Vegas package tours, soon became so lucrative that business classes seemed unnecessary. It was about this time, during visits to see his father's old band "The Witnesses" and sitting in with his sister Lena's group, Prima said, that the stage bug bit.

He said he had a reasonably successful career as the singer/songwriter in a Las Vegas rock band called "Problem Child," but he got out of rock when grunge became popular because "I don't believe in being unhappy ever."

He began playing his dad's music in 1995.

To Prima's ear, his voice is not an exact match of his father's; though he tries to play his dad's horn parts note for note. Gia Prima said her son's voice occasionally echoes her late husband's, but, when it does, she is moved to tears.

"Every now and then," Gia Prima said, "I can barely speak, because just naturally he'll get a certain sound in his voice, a certain gesture. Sometimes it's very hard; it brings me to tears. I don't want him to see me."

Prima said his father's acute audience awareness is in his genes.

"Anybody can do the songs," Prima said. "But I want people to remember what it was like to see him; the energy, the happiness he brought."

Spitzer, who saw Prima two years ago at the Gretna Heritage Festival's Italian Village Stage, said Prima's act fell into the "great old patriarchal tradition."

"I was very, very impressed," Spitzer said. "He had a sense of honor, of joy; a sense of being Louis Prima's son, but also a sense of self."